The Danger of Words and Writings on Wittgenstein

163 Pages·1996·30.903 MB·English

by  Maurice O’Connor Drury

WITTGENSTEIN STUDIES
Wittgenstein Studies is an invaluable resource for the
Wittgenstein scholar.
It collects together many of the major texts of recent years,
making available books that have proved to be of enduring
relevance to the study of Wittgenstein.
The Danger of Woreb-
and writings on Wittgenstein
WITTGENSTEIN STUDIES
Drury's principal work, The Danger ofW ords, a collection
of essays on the philosophical problems in psychology, is
here reprinted alongside his equally important accounts of
conversations with Wittgenstein, his reply ro a review and a
previously unpublished lecture.
Drury was one of Wittgenstein's closest friends and their
intimate exchange of views on religion, philosophy and
personal issues provide valuable clues to understanding
Wittgenstein's life and work.
The Danger of Words
'. .. the most truly Wittgensteinian work published by
s
any of Wittgenstein students ... '
- Ray Monk, Ludwig Wittgenstein and writings on Wittgenstein
PHILOSOPHY, PSYCHOLOGY, THEOLOGY
ISBN 1 85506 490 1
M. O'C. DRURY
A
49.94
Published by Thoemmes Press DRU Edited and Introduced by
11 Great George Street l~t:lN 1-t!ooUb-48U-1 David Berman, Michael Fitzgerald and John Hayes
Bristol BS 1 5RR, UK
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CONTENTS
22883 Quicksilver Drive
Dulles, Virginia 20166, USA
Editor's Preface
by David Berman and Michael Fitzgerald ...... ... ........ vii
Wittgenstein Studies
6 volume hardback ser: ISBN I 85506 494 4
Wittgenstein's 'Pupil':
Paperback: ISBN I 85506 490 I The Writings of Maurice O'Connor Drury
by Dr John Hayes ..... .... ..... ...................... ix
The Danger of Words a11d writings on Wittgenstein © Thoemmes Press, 1996
The Danger of Words
The Danger ofW ords ( 1976) by M. O'C. Drury ..... .. ..... .. ....... .... .. xvi + 141pp
'Face and Hypothesis' (1974)
'Some Notes on Conversations with Wittgenstein' (1984)
Fact and Hypothesis
'Conversations with Wittgenstein' (1984)
1967 Dublin Lecture on Wittgenstein (1967) from The Human World, vol. 15-16 (1974)
©the estate of M. O'C. Drury by M. O'C. Drury .... ..... .. .. ... .. .... ......... .... 4pp
Endnotes to 'Some Notes on Conversations with Wittgenstein' and
Some Notes on Conversations with Wittgenstein
'Conversations with Wittgenstein' (1984) © the estate of Rush Rhees
from Recollections of Wittgenstein, ed. R. Rhees (Oxford
Editor's Prefizce © David Berman and Michael Fitzgerald, 1996 University Press, 1984)
Wittgenstein's Pupil© John Hayes, 1996 by M. O'C. Drury .. ......... ........ ... ........ .... 96pp
Conversations with Wittgenstein
from Recollections of Wittgenstein, ed. R. Rhees (Oxford
University Press, 1984)
by M. O'C. Drury ... ......... ............. .... ..... . 10pp
1967 Dublin Lecture on Wittgenstein
by M. O'C. Drury ................... .. ........... .. 16pp
Publisher's Nore
The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure rhe
quality of this reprint bur points our that some
imperfections in rhe original book may be apparent.
v
EDITORS' PREFACE
Maurice O'Connor Drury, like his mentor Wittgenstein, did
not publish a great deal. Most of his publications - and, we
believe, the most valuable of them - are reprinted in this
volume. Probably best known are 'Some Notes on Conversat
ions with Wittgenstein', which originally appeared in Acta
Philosophica Fennica, vol. 28, in 1976, the year of Drury's
death, and was then included in a volume edited by his friend,
Rush Rhees, Ludwig Wittgenstein: Personal Recollections,
published by Blackwell in 1981, which also contained the first
printing of Drury's 'Conversations with Wittgenstein', a
longer work from which 'Some Notes' were drawn. In 1984
Rush Rhees's volume was again issued, this time by Oxford
University Press, with corrections and some new material.
The present reprint of Drury's 'Some Notes' and 'Conversat
ions' is taken from this later, corrected edition.
However, Drury was more than merely the biographer of
Wittgenstein. He was also a student of philosophy and a
respected psychiatrist, and his most original work, The
Danger of Words (Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1973), reprint
ed here, brings together these two dominant elements of his
life-work: the philosophical and the psychiatric. As an
addendum to The Danger of Words we also reprint Drury's
'Fact and Hypothesis', which appeared in the journal The
Human World, vol. 15-16 (1974), in reply to a review of his
book by Ilham Dilman (The Human World, vol. 14, 1974).
The final item in this collection is a hitherto unpublished
lecture which Drury gave at University College, Dublin, to the
student Philosophy Society - probably, judging from a letter
Maurice O'Connor Drury, about age 10 of Rhees to Drury of 24 May 1968 - on 9 November 1967.
Vil
I
v111 Preface
We are grateful to the Drury family for their generous
cooperation - for example, in making available the typescript
of Drury's lecture as well as two photographs of him
reproduced in the present volume.
David Berman and Michael Fitzgerald
WITTGENSTEIN'S 'PUPIL':
Trinity College, University of Dublin, 1996
THE WRITINGS OF
MAURICE O'CONNOR DRURY
I
Maurice O'Connor Drury (called 'Con' by his friends) was
born in Exeter in 1907, of Irish parentage. He attended the
grammar school of that city and then went in 1925 to Trinity
College, Cambridge, where he took the Moral Science Tripos.
In 1929, Drury met Ludwig Wittgenstein, a newly appointed
lecturer in philosophy at Trinity College. Wittgenstein had
taken up a fellowship in that College in 1926 following
strenuous efforts by Frank Ramsey, Bertrand Russell and
Maynard Keynes to bring him back to philosophy from self
imposed obscurity as a primary school teacher in remote
mountain villages in Lower Austria. Drury and Wittgenstein
met at a meeting of the Moral Science Club, in C. D. Broad's
rooms. There began a friendship between student and teacher
that was to last through the many vicissitudes of their lives
until the philosopher's death from cancer in 1951 in the home
of a medical friend of Drury's.
Drury made several attempts to give an account of this
friendship. The first was a brief intervention in a symposium,
which is recorded in a book published in 1967,1 in which he
disputed the popular conception that Wittgenstein was a
'rather cantankerous, arrogant, tormented genius' rather than
1
In 'A Symposium', in K. T. Fann (ed.}, Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Man and
his Philosophy (Sussex: Harvester Press, 1967), pp. 67-71.
IX
I
x The Danger of Words Wittgenstein's Pupil x1
the man he knew to be 'the most warm-hearted, generous, and Ay_er and _Gilbert Ryle) and 'to see his writings from a new
loyal friend anyone could wish to have'.2 His most substantial pomt of view'. On the positive side, Drury wanted to show
account, however, was 'Some Notes on Conversations with that in an_ age mark~d most of all by scientific progress the
Wittgenstein' and 'Conversations with Wittgenstein', edited cen,tra~ Wmgenstem1an philosophical project was to prevent
by another member of Wittgenstein's circle of close friends, us being dazzled by what we know'. Another - his first
effort -was made in 1954 in the form of 'Letters to a Student
Rush Rhees.
Taken together, these texts offer perhaps the most intimate of Philosophy', eventually published in 1983.4
portrait available of Wittgenstein for the last twenty years, or ~o a less~r. de?ree, one can also find in the Drury material
so, of his life. The point of view is initially that.of an impres Wmgenstem s views on modern psychological approaches to
sionable student-disciple, who admits himself that he neither the human personality. Drury was to become a psychiatrist
had the quick-wittedness nor the emotional resources - ~ choice _of career in which he was strongly influenced by
necessary to stand up to his teacher - and who, even when he Wmgenstem, whom he reveals as sharing an interest in the
was in his maturity, had to take steps to avert undue influence mentally ill as welL We shall have occasion to indicate later
from Wittgenstein's powerful, even domineering, personality. what Drury himself made of his Wittgensteinian inheritance
They also give us a unique depiction of Wittgenstein's in relatio~ to psyc_hiatry, chiefly as recorded in The Danger of
religious sensibility and suggest, in particular, that at least at Words, his most important work. This book is a collection
the time when Drury was his student, the philosopher's of lectu_r~s on the g_eneral theme of what philosophy can bring
to medicine, especially psychiatry.
religious concerns and attitude to metaphysics were still akin
to those originally recorded by Paul Engelmann,3 whose
friendship with Wittgenstein was especially active for a decade
after 1916. Drury's personal record challenges - self
consciously so - what he saw as the common misunder
standing of these and some other aspects of Wittgenstein's 'Letter.s W a Student of Philosophy', in Desmond Lee (ed.), Philosophical
personality and philosophy within the analytic tradition. lnvest1gat1011s, vol. 6 (1983), pp. 76-102, 159-74. Prior to this edition of
Prior to the publication of this record, Drury had made ~he letters, they were copied and circulated privately in America. The
_student of philosophy' was Drnry's then two-year-old son, Luke, who is
other attempts to outline his view of Wittgenstein's thought,
imagined as having entered his second year of University. Luke is
adopting a different format. One of these was a lecture given perplexed by the lack ?fa pos_itive doctrine among his philosophy teachers
at University College, Dublin in 1967, which has not been who offer ?nly a,nalytic_al crmc1sm of other writers' metaphysical theories
about the great questions such as the destiny of man, the nature of the
published previously, in which he tried both 'to turn the
real,_of goodness, of truth an~ of beauty. The burden of Drury's advice
attention away from certain common misunderstandings to. his son, for which _he cla1m_s Wmgenstein's authority, is that the
about the man and his work' (instancing J. L. Austin, A.]. widespread understanding of Wittgenstein as a fellow-traveller and even
inspirer of t,he enemies of m~taphysics is fundamentally erroneous.
Wmgenstein s crmque of tradmonal metaphysics was designed to protect
(not, as commonly understood, undermine) the metaphysical passion for
the absolute by loca.ting it where it can be fulfiled - beyond the boundary
2 Ibid., p. 67. where langu_age fails us. Access to the metaphysical is indirect: the
1 Paul Engelmann, Letters from Ludwig Wittgenstein with a Memoir philosopher is in the same Jan~s-like situation as a cartographer who in
(Oxford: Blackwell, 1967). The Engelmann/Wittgenstein correspondence the process of mapping the outline of an oceanic island pari passu indicates
began in 1916 and virtually ceased in 1925. Contact with the Engelmann the expanse of the sea which surrounds it. Many of the secondary
family and its circle of friends re-activated Wittgenstein's latent sense of d1scuss1ons that take place in these letters are more fully developed in The
Danger of Words.
his own Jewishness.
I
x11 The Danger of Words Wittgenstein's Pupil xm
II scaffolding of dogma. Later, while living as an elementary
school teacher in the village of Trattenbach in Lower Austria,
The account of their conversations shows Wittgenstein and Wittgenstein had read The Brothers Karamazov aloud to the
Drury quickly becoming friends. Wittgenstein questions local priest. Now, he had Drury read it also and Crime and
Drury about how he had come to have an interest in Punishment too, as well as Tolstoy's short stories.
philosophy, enquires about his childhood and confides feeling Wittgenstein told Drury that Tolstoy and Dostoevsky were
'morbid fears' himself during that period of his life. The 'the only two European writers in recent times who really had
only cure for such fears, Wittgenstein said, was 'religious something important to say about religion' (N, p. 86). It is
feelings'.5 As the reader can see, quite a lot of their conver clear that the important thing to say about religion was that
sation centred around religion. It is clear from the it concerned ethical action - what Wittgenstein customarily
unpublished correspondence between Drury and Rush Rhees, referred to as 'decent' behaviour. When a student of
who was one of Wittgenstein's literary executors, that Rhees Wittgenstein's wrote to tell him that he had converted to
regarded Drury as Wittgenstein's special intimate in matters Catholicism, Wittgenstein replied: 'If someone tells me he
religious from the 1930s onwards.6 has bought the outfit of a tightrope-walker I am not impressed
Wittgenstein related to Drury certain crucial incidents until I see what is done with it' (N, p. 88). On another
connected with the evolution of his own religious sensibility. occasion he said to Drury: 'If you and I are to live religious
To begin with, there was a line in Ludwig Anzengruber's Die lives, it mustn't be that we talk a lot about religion, but that
Kreuzelschreiber, a play which he attended in 1910, and our manner of life is different' (C, p. 114).
which, although not obviously distinguished, spoke directly Wittgenstein was radical in his views on the basis for
to him. This Wittgenstein rendered in his Lecture on Ethics Christian faith. When Drury and he discussed the
as 'I am safe, nothing can injure me whatever happens'.7 fundamental texts of the Christian tradition, they could agree
Then there was the influence of Tolstoy, whose short version that the Old Testament canon was 'no more than a collection
of the Gospels (The Gospels Brie-fly Stated) he read in 1915, of Hebrew folklore' (C, p. 100). However, Wittgenstein
during his period of military service in the Austrian army in disagreed with Drury's view that the New Testament books
Galicia (where, incidentally, he met Engelmann). Tolstoy had to be a historical record; it did not really matter, he
presented Christianity as a radical moral doctrine, summed up thought, whether Jesus was a historical figure or not. Indeed,
in the Sermon on the Mount. The message of spiritual purity as he later put it, it would be impossible for him 'to say what
as a basis for human community had no need of the form the record' of the miracle of God becoming man should
take (C, p. 164). Nevertheless, he could not relate to the
person revealed in St John's Gospel and preferred St
Maurice O'Connor Drury, 'Conversation with Wittgenstein', in Rush Matthew's Jesus. Similarly, he could not see that St Paul's
Rhees (ed.), Recollections of Wittgenstein (Oxford University Press, 1984), epistles were 'one and the same religion' (C, p. 165) as that
p. 100. Henceforth, this is referred to as C (cursively in the text mainly). of the Gospels - although he changed his mind about that
The companion piece, 'Some Notes on Conversations with Wittgenstein',
from the same publication, is henceforth referred to as N. later in life. If religious belief is not grounded in historical
6 Rhees to Drury, 10 July 1971. This correspondence is in the Drury family. fact, neither can it be based on rational considerations - as the
contemporary Cambridge theologian, F. R. Tennant, was
7 Ludwig Wittgenstein, 'A Lecture on Ethics', in Philosophical Review,
vol. 74 (1965), p. 8. This was Wittgenstein's only formal public lecture trying to do (in his Philosophical Theology) by reviving the
and was delivered on 17 November 1929 to the Heretics Society in argument from design, for example. Wittgenstein did not
Cambridge. accept that for a religious believer the existence of God, could
I
xiv The Danger of Words Wittgenstein's Pupil xv
ever be merely a probability (however high), as Tennant common fundamental experience to respect in all of them, and
considered it to be. Wittgenstein wanted to steer his friend to recommending William James's Varieties of Religious
Kierkegaard, whom Drury had alre~dy come across in Experience to help Drury to see this. Yet, in religion, as in all
quotations in the writings of the Catholic modernist, von other areas of life, Wittgenstein wanted to 'teach people
Hugel. According to Drury, what Wittgenstein found in differences' - especially where what they wanted to see were
Kierkegaard and also in Augustine was a vein of 'negative similarities. 9
theology'. This vein is already adumbrated in the last lines of Wittgenstein's own religious background encompassed
the Tractatus - now so often quoted that they seem trite - that many differences. His paternal grandparents were born Jews
'whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent'. but both were baptized before their marriage in the Lutheran
Drury's primary intention in publishing his journal was to church, the grandfather perhaps at an early point in his life.
alert us to Wittgenstein's views on what religion was - and its His maternal grandfather was reared a Catholic by his
importance, so understood, in impelling him to live a decent mother, who had converted to Catholicism from Judaism.
life. In so doing, Drury also alerts us to the surprising depth His maternal grandmother was Catholic. Although the family
and extent of Wittgenstein's acquaintance with classical did not see themselves - nor emphatically did they want to see
religious thought and to the remaining ganglia of the religious themselves - as Jewish, a relict of that identity still attached
sensibility of a man once known to his fellow-soldiers as 'the to it. Wittgenstein himself was baptized a Catholic and
man with the gospels'. received instruction in that faith. This instruction was not
If religious belief is not based on historical fact or much reinforced in his home and he gave up standard
philosophical (or indeed theological) reflection, neither is it Catholic religious practice as a teenager after discussing the
based on science. James Frazer in The Golden Bough, a matter with his sister, 'Gretl' (better known as Margarete
book Drury obtained at Wittgenstein's request in 1931, had outside the family). The particular Catholic position that
understood the primitive rituals he described as arising partly offended him, he told Drury, was that it is possible to prove
from the scientific errors of the peoples who celebrated them. the existence of God by natural reason. This, he said,
This, Wittgenstein said, was itself erroneous. These rituals involved conceiving of God as just another being, like himself
were created by technically advanced civilizations. In the and outside himself - only infinitely more powerful. If this
UCD lecture, Drury asks us to consider, for example, what were God, he would regard it as a duty to defy it.
such people had discovered about agriculture, metal working, Nevertheless, he admired the Latin collects, thought the
architecture, the use of the wheel, and the making of fire. symbolisms of Catholicism 'wonderful beyond words' ( C,
Rather than being a symptom of some lack in their knowledge p. 102) and, unlike Franz Brentano, could even conceive of a
of how the world works, their rituals expressed their awe and meaningful infallible Papal declaration (C, p. 130). He
wonder at it. Wittgenstein shared this 'primitive' feeling. As himself had prayed during his military service and said he was
he put in his Lecture on Ethics: 'I wonder at the existence of happy to be compelled to attend Mass during the Italian
the world. And I am then inclined to use such phrase as "how
extraordinary that anything should exist" or "how extraor
dinary that the world should exist" .'8 He was, in general, C, p. 157 .. Wittgenstein adopted this phrase from King Lear, Act I, Scene
1v. Drury ma note to Letter 14 of his 'Letters to a Student of Philosophy'
disinclined to privilege any religious tradition, finding a
says that 'the Philosophical Investigations are concerned with insisting on
differences where we want to see similarities' (p. 169). Note, however,
how m The Danger of Words Drury writes: 'it is not given to any man to
8 Ibid. be an honorary member of all religions' (p. 133).
xvi The Danger of Words Wittgenstein's Pupil xv11
campaign. Instead of writing, he prayed, when in 1931 he Otto Weininger (who killed himself in Beethoven's house in
went to stay in Norway, in the hut he had had built there in September 1903, four months after his book was published).
1914. From the point of view of Wittgenstein's religious sensibility,
While in Norway, he also wrote down his sins and on his this feeling of Jewishness seems to have manifested itself in a
return disclosed them to his friends. Like all the others who strong belief in the Last Judgement as a young man and, as
read or heard this particular confession of 1931, Drury did an older one, in what he called the 'hundred per cent Hebraic'
not reveal what Wittgenstein confessed to. From a remark ( C, p. 161) sense that what we do makes a difference in the
Drury later made to Rush Rhees, the latter inferred that end. Such a perspective compels taking our actions seriously;
Wittgenstein confessed, inter alia, to having 9enied to his there is only one chance at life and an accounting at the end
headmaster that he had hit a child while teaching in an of it. Wittgenstein seems to have had an abiding sense of guilt
elementary school in the village of Otterthal in 1926. There which he constantly counter-balanced by a renewed resolution
was, in fact, a formal investigation of an incident in which to live life decently.
Wittgenstein struck a boy of eleven following which the child Although clearly imbued by the Gospels and various
collapsed. Although Wittgenstein was cleared, he insisted on thinkers within the Christian tradition, Wittgenstein waged
resigning, which was wise since this appears to have been part what can only be called a campaign to have Drury change his
of a pattern of abusive behaviour of his pupils. According to plan, originally influenced by the example of an Anglo
Rowland Hutt (who heard a later version of the confession in Catholic priest in Exeter (Fr. E. C. Long), to go to Westcott
1938), Wittgenstein said he had told lies at this investigation House, the Church of England Theological College, in
as well as simply to the headmaster.10 Cambridge, after graduating, with a view to taking Anglican
It appears from the testimony of his teacher of Russian, orders. This plan was shared by at least two of his contem
Fania Pascal (to whom he confessed in 1938) that poraries, who were also students of Wittgenstein - John King
Wittgenstein was also concerned that he had been deceitful to and Desmond Lee. When Wittgenstein heard of Drury's
his friends regarding the details of his Jewish family intentions, he said, 'I can't approve; no, I can't approve. I am
background. He believed he had allowed them to assume that afraid that one day that collar would choke you' (C, p. 101).
he was one-quarter Jewish and three-quarters Aryan, rather What he seems to have objected to specifically was the
than the reverse - as was to be the technical position, at least, 'narrowness' of the Anglican clergy for which William James
for a family with his bloodlines under the Nuremberg race was a good antidote. Drury probably did not know that
laws. It is implausible that this 'deception', in precisely these Wittgenstein had himself considered taking orders in 1919 -
terms, was a live issue in 1931 - but it is clear from other at least, according to a fellow prisoner of war, Franz Parak.11
writings that his Jewish identity and its supposed effect on his Nevertheless, when Drury did graduate with a First Class
intellectual style (which he thought he shared with Freud, Honours degree in 1931, he went to Westcott House but
among others), was already preoccupying him at that time. In after a year told Wittgenstein that he was abandoning his
his diaries he recorded his struggle with the concept of 'den plan. Wittgenstein, who had undermined Drury's view of a
judishen Geist' - in which he was probably influenced by his future leading a small village community as its priest, had
reading of Sex and Character (Geschlecht und Charakter), by ready advice for Drury. He was to leave Cambridge now that
Ill Cf. Ray Monk, Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius (Jonathan 11 Cf. Brian McGuinness, Wittgenstein - A Life: Young Ludwig, 1889-1921
Cape: London, 1990), p. 370. (London: Duckworth, 1988), p. 274.
I
xvm The Danger of Words Wittgenstein's Pupil xix
'a separation had occurred' in his life and 'get among ordinary of his education he should train instead as a doctor and later
people of a type that you at present know nothing about' (C, on, presumably, specialize in psychiatry. Drury wrote to
p. 121). He cited approvingly the case of another student who Wittgenstein giving an account of these events and received,
had left Westcott House (probably Desmond Lee) who had in reply, a telegram summoning him at once to Cambridge.
taken a job in Woolworth's Stores. On his arrival, Drury found that Wittgenstein had already
arranged for the financing of his medical education. The
III money was to be raised by Wittgenstein and 'two wealthy
friends' (C , p. 124) - Maynard Keynes and Gilbert Pattisson.13
Drury took his mentor's advice and volunteered to help the Wittgenstein and Drury decided together, after reading the
Archdeacon of Newcastle to run a club for the unemployed available prospectuses, that Drury should study in Trinity
on Tyneside, then in the throes of the Depression. After College, Dublin and in due course he enrolled there in 1933.
several months, Drury was no longer needed as the club could Drury's brother, Miles, an architect practising in Exeter,
survive without him. In imminent prospect of unemployment had a holiday cottage at Rosro, Salruck, on the Co. Galway
himself, Drury applied for a job teaching philosophy at side of Killary Harbour, and in September 1934 Drury invited
Armstrong College, now the University of Newcastle. Wittgenstein and his friend, Francis Skinner, 14 to stay there for
Wittgenstein agreed that under the circumstances it was the two weeks. They took the Galway-Clifden railway to Recess,
only thing to do and gave him a reference. When Dorothy some twenty miles from Rosro. Drury's mother was ending
Emmett won the competition, Wittgenstein was very relieved a holiday there and the plan was that the car that took her to
and later used to say to Drury that he 'owed a great debt to the station would provide transport for Wittgenstein's onward
Miss Emmett, in that she had saved [him] ... from becoming journey. Perhaps not surprisingly, Drury's mother had been
a professional philosopher' .12 suspicious of Wittgenstein's influence over her son but was
Drury found a position as an assistant to the warden of quite won over when she met him at the railway station. As
another unemployment scheme in Merthyr Tydfil in South Drury's record shows, the friends ate simply, and were forced
Wales. Moved by the plight of a friend who had to be to stay indoors (because of rain) where they read aloud to one
admitted to a mental hospital, he determined on becoming a another and discussed what they had read. In general, Drury
psychiatric nurse. On receiving his application, the Medical makes clear that Wittgenstein had a catholic interest in books
Superintendent tried to dissuade him and urged that in view - from history to literary fiction to detective stories etc. It is
also clear that Wittgenstein was passionately interested in, and
12 C, p. 123. In Fann, op. cit., Drury reflected on why 'Wittgenstein knowledgeable about, classic.al· music.
constantly urged his pupils not to take up an academic post and become Drury and Wittgenstein shared the Easter holiday of 1935
teachers of philosophy'. Professional philosophers were ipso facto under
with Drury's family in Woolacombe in North Devon and
the pressure of:
Wittgenstein came for a stay in the Drury family home in
having to go on talking when really they knew in their heart that they
had nothing of value to say ... Kant said that a great deal of philosophy Exeter in 1936. Wittgenstein, who had earlier told Drury that
reminded him of one person holding a sieve while the other tried to milk 'one of the things you and I have to learn is that we have to
the he-goat. Wittgenstein wanted above all things to make an end of
sieve-holding and he-goat milking.
The reality was that good philosophy emerged only after 'long periods of
n Ray Monk, op. cit., p. 335.
darkness and confusion when one just had to wait' (p. 69). If a philosopher
possesses a marketable skill, he should practise it during such periods. 14 Skinner was a young, extremely talented mathematics student when
Wittgenstein envied Spinoza, the lens-grinder, for this. Wittgenstein got to know him. He died of polio in 1941.
I
xx The Danger of Words Wittgenstein's Pupil xx1
live without the consolations of belonging to a Church' ( C, sincere and persistent. On the theoretical side, this is shown,
p. 114 ), now encouraged him to attend church services. for example, by his long-standing engagement with Freud's
Again, in 1949, he recommended to Drury, as a kind of writings, begun when he read the Interpretation of Dreams in
religious experiment, to attend what Wittgenstein considered 1919 and had his sister Gretl enquire of Freud whether the
the more awesome Latin masses in Dublin in comparison to symbolism in a picture Wittgenstein had seen at an exhibition
the predominantly low-church Anglican services - even was, as he believed, oneiric. The interest in Freud is further
though as a group he preferred the Protestant clergy because documented by G. E. Moore, who records two lectures given
they looked less smug than the Roman priests! In August in 1932 by Wittgenstein on Freud as part of a series on
1936, Wittgenstein (accompanied by Skinner) came to Dublin aesthetics.16 Wittgenstein's interest in Freud is, to a degree,
to holiday with Drury. One diversion was taking also documented by Drury himself (whose birthday present
photographs with cheap cameras purchased at Woolworth's. from Wittgenstein in 1936 was the Interpretation) and, most
Appositely, Drury refers to his journal entries of his conver of all, by Rush Rhees who wrote down the substance of a
sations with Wittgenstein as 'an album of snapshots taken by number of conversations he had with Wittgenstein about
an amateur photographer with a mediocre camera' (C, p. Freud in 1942, '43 and '46.17
98). Perhaps more revealing of the sincerity of Wittgenstein's
That same year, 1936, Wittgenstein wrote to Drury with a interest in psychiatry was his visiting of mentally ill patients
most surprising request. He and Skinner were seriously during a stay in Dublin from 8 February to the middle of
thinking of taking up medical studies and he wanted Drury to March, 1938. He asked Drury, now a resident at the Royal
enquire at Trinity College, Dublin what the formalities City of Dublin Hospital, Baggot St., to arrange for these
connected with enrolling in the medical school were. In v1. s1. ts. 18 D rury approac h e d Dr R. R. Leeper, the Medical
another letter, Wittgenstein suggested that if he did qualify, Superintendent of St Patrick's Hospital.19 After interviewing
Drury and he might practise together as psychiatrists, as he Wittgenstein, Leeper allowed him to visit long-stay inmates
felt he might have a 'special talent' for that branch of two or three times a week. Of one such inmate - 'certified and
medicine. From an extant letter to Maynard Keynes, it chronic' according to Drury - Wittgenstein said memorably:
appears that the plan to become a medical student was 'this man is more intelligent than his doctors'.20 He was also
originally hatched in 1935 as a means of fulfilling a wish, very
difficult to realize, of living in Russia.15 Nothing came of these
enquiries. Later - it is not clear whether this was an
explanation for the abandonment of the plan - Wittgenstein 16 'Wittgenstein's Lectures in 1930-33', Mind, vol. 64 (January 1955),
pp. 15-21.
told Drury that 'he would not want to undergo a training
17 In Ludwig Wittgenstein, Lectures and Conversations on Aesthetics,
analysis' (C, p. 137).
Psychology and Belief, ed. Cyril Barrett (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1966).
Although this remark is difficult to understand, because
18 It was probably during this residency that Wittgenstein wrote to Drury the
training in psychiatry did not then (no more than it does
encouraging letter given in N, pp. 95-6.
now) require undergoing a psychoanalysis, it is clear that
19 St Patrick's, James's St., Dublin 8, was once popularly known as 'Swift's
Wittgenstein's interest in mental illness and its treatment was
Hospital' after the Dean who inspired its foundation. Elizabeth Malcolm,
in Swift's Hospital: A History of St. Patrick's Hospital, Dublin, 1746-1989
(Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1989) mentions Drury on p. 276 and passim.
1.i WMoitotgree,n sGte. iHn .t ov oKne Wynreisg h(3t 0( eJdu.n) ea s1s9is3te5d), biny BL.e tMtecrsG tuoi nRnuesssse (llO, xKfeoyrnde: sB aansidl 211 Maurice O'Connor Drury, The Danger of Words (London: Routledge and
Blackwell, 1974). Kegan Paul, 1973), p. 136, reprinted here. Henceforth DoW in text.